More than a week has gone by since the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing. It has been a mad few days on the ground reacting to the twists and turns of the story.

Since the news first broke, there have been reports of an oil slick off the coast of Vietnam, identities of the passengers have been questioned, technical analysis of flight communications have been discussed, and a whole spectrum of conspiracy theories and unverified photos have been circulated on the internet.

I attend the daily press conferences with the same keenness that many of our viewers and readers feel as they anxiously follow the story. We are all hoping that the authorities will give us more clues – just tell me what exactly is going on here!

But at the same time that all this has been happening, flights to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur continue to operate. They still follow the same flight path and the same type of aircraft is still being used, with the same departure time at the same airport. The only difference is that it is no longer called the MH370, out of respect for the passengers and crew members on the missing aircraft. It is now called the MH318.

I talked to my editors and we decided that I should take this flight and document events from before take-off until 1.30 a.m. – a time shortly after MH370 was last sighted on civilian radar screens on March 8.

Before taking on the assignment, I asked myself: “will lightning strike twice…?” But of course there was not much time to think. I booked my tickets, took a shower, had a coffee and a chat with my colleagues and then was on my way to the departure hall to board the plane.

At the departure gate, there were a fair few passengers although not enough to fill a whole 777. A number of them were using the benches as beds, catching up on sleep before the overnight flight.

Among them, one Chinese passenger whom I spoke to said that he wasn’t nervous about taking the flight at all. “Life still goes on, work still has to be done. In fact, I believe that what happened to the MH370 may make it an even safer flight for me”.

Other Chinese passengers standing nearby started to chip in. They realised that I was a journalist and began to ask me questions too: “Do you think the authorities are hiding something?” “They must know something that we don’t right?” “Do you think they will find it?” As one asked, all the others looked to me for an answer. It was a stressful moment. I have heard all the conspiracy theories, but my guess about what happened to the plane is just as good as anyone else’s. We have no real clue, and until we do everything is pure speculation.

After passing the queue for security checks I began taking photos like crazy. I really needed a shot that would sum up the experience of boarding this flight. There it was – the Boeing 777-200ER sitting on the tarmac lit by orange sodium-vapour lamps. A view like this was probably the last glimpse of normality that passengers on board the missing MH370 flight had. I took as many pictures as I could before getting on the plane.

Upon entering the cabin seat, I scouted out various possible photo positions and made sure that the passengers in nearby seats understood what I was trying to do. I was more nervous than everyone else, I guess, and was not sure how the cabin crew would react to my photography. Maybe they were under pressure from the media attention, and had some directive to stop photographers, I thought.

I felt that I only had a limited window to take pictures before they would confront me and tell me to stop. Thankfully, all the passengers were very understanding and did not mind me taking photos of them on the flight.

I planned out what I needed to do next and made notes on all the activities in the cabin from the moment I sat in my seat until the fateful 1.30 a.m. – close to the time of MH370′s last known contact.

These were my entries:

00:35 Cabin crew performs a headcount

00:36 Cabin crew page for a missing passenger

00:43 Doors close

00:44 Safety videos play on the screens

00:45 Aircraft reverses

00:49 Aircraft moves forward towards the runway

00:50 Lights dim

00:56 Captain instructs cabin crew to be seated for take off

00:58 Aircraft accelerates and takes off

01:07 Slight turbulence but aircraft still gaining altitude

01:11 Lights turn back on. Cabin crew draw the curtains between business and economy class cabins, a guy sitting near me complains about his uncomfortable seat

00:13 Headphones are distributed, followed by custom arrival forms

01:18 Food cart is pushed forward, sandwiches and juice are served. No hot drinks due to turbulence

01:29 Announcement by the captain, who states the current altitude, the estimated journey time, time of arrival and general direction of flight

01:30 The captain concludes his announcement with “Pleasant evening and good night”

My heart skips a beat. What a coincidence – reports said the last radio message sent out from MH370 was “All right, good night”. I quickly took more photos of various maps showing the plane’s position on the in-flight screens.

After checking that I had all the photos and information that I needed, I felt a sense of relief. Now all I had to do was find out how the cabin crew felt about the flight. I entered the pantry and asked for some wine before engaging in small talk with the air stewardess.

“Of course we knew you were taking photos in the cabin,” one of them told me after I explained to the stewardesses what I was doing.

She said she had worked on previous MH370 flights and although she was not close to any of the missing cabin crew, she knew them and they had worked on shifts together from time to time. It was a big shock for her and many others; she remembered coming back to work the day after the disappearance to see a group of her colleagues crying over the shocking news.

I asked politely if they felt comfortable working on this flight after MH370 went missing. The cabin crew did not say much. Maybe it was a busy time, but maybe it was also time for me to stop the conversation.

Singapore’s port is one of the busiest in the world and has long been a key part of the island’s economy. I took some time last year to document the shipping hub, and was surprised to see how closely life in Singapore is linked to it.

Walking along the coast on a fine day, you’ll see countless ships anchored in the sea around the city-state. At East Coast Park, where many leisure activities take place, I saw a group of school girls conducting soccer training as tankers lined up to make a call at the port. It was quite a peculiar scene – in the foreground daily life was going on, but in the backdrop a massive industry was working around the clock to get cargo shipped or vessels refueled.

Even from atop Singapore’s iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel – a modern landmark that houses some of the most lavish entertainment for visitors spending top dollar – you have a full view of vessels waiting silently for their turn to enter the port.

According to its Maritime and Port Authority, Singapore sees around 140,000 calls from vessels every year. Its many terminals work around the clock to serve them, often handling 60,000 containers a day.

From a height of more than 10 storeys, through the glass bottom of a crane driver’s cockpit, I could see trucks lining up in an orderly fashion to deliver the unloaded containers as a group of managers sat in control rooms monitoring every aspect of the operations. As soon as a container was unloaded, the radios blared instructions for the next one on the list. Time is money, and there was no time to waste.

But what struck me most about this city were the traditional fishermen who still ply their trade in the waters around the modern port using lines and fish traps. They were part of a small group who lived on a patch of sand on the western coast near the port. When they are not fishing, they make a living waxing boats and greasing engines for boat owners.

Two of them, Ahmad and Sami, showed me their way of life one afternoon, as they headed out in their wooden boat affectionately named “The Merlin”. Before setting off, Sami told me about vessel: “It’s not the biggest, but it’s the fastest, I think you will like it” It was indeed fast, but plenty of water splashed into the boat every time it cut into a small wave. Within minutes I was totally drenched – much to their amusement.

We set out that day with one objective: to set up fish traps. But all we did in two hours out at sea was go line fishing, smoke cigarettes, talk about life and do more line fishing.

Ahmad and Sami were born on the small islands off the coast and grew up fishing with their fathers. As Singapore developed, their village moved to the mainland and they could no longer maintain this lifestyle. So every minute at sea was a total escape from what they said was the “stressful life” of the mainland.

As the sun was close to setting, they got ready to set up the fish trap. The tide was finally low enough for them to cast their nets safely. And the low tide also uncovered a small island of dead corals and rocks in the middle of the sea, which I used as my vantage point. The water was up to my knees at some points, but it was completely safe. Still, it wasn’t a reassuring feeling to be alone in the waters as they rowed further and further away.

As they set up the trap, just outside the port, I thought to myself how wonderful it was to have their old way of life and the rapid pace of the modern city in that one shot. After the trap was set, Sami called out from the boat: “Stay there, we are coming to get you now, we have some time left. Do you want to do some more fishing?”

As someone who has lived in Singapore all my life, haze is not unusual, it is somewhat a seasonal event that I have become used to. But last Monday was different, I woke up to a slightly smokey smell in the air and the view outside my apartment was more hazy than usual. Immediately, I checked Facebook to see what my friends working in the city were experiencing. Many posted pictures of a very hazy skyline from the view in their office and remarked that even the air in the subway and malls smelled of smoke.

I immediately made my way to the business district to have a look. My first instinct was to get up to the rooftop of the Marina Bay Sands hotel to get the best vantage point available in the city. On the way up, a hotel staff member apologized to me in the elevator, “I am sorry for the view today”. He was right, from the observation deck, the haze was so thick that I could only see the outlines of landmark buildings.

There on the 57th floor, I could feel no breeze. It was very humid, my chest felt tight and I found it hard to breathe carrying all my gear with me. I needed that one picture showing a human element against the hazy skyline and I knew it was at the poolside which only hotel guests had access. My only option was to wait to join one of the three daily scheduled tours of the pool for the public. So I waited two hours in the humidity before a tour guide came along and brought us in. “Take as many pictures as you want” he said. The only problem was, it wasn’t exactly a tour of the pool, we were only allowed in a small 20 yard stretch shared among at least 40 other tourists with cameras and we had only about fifteen minutes. Worse still, many of the hotel guests were suddenly getting out of the pool because of all the tourists looking at them. But I was lucky, just before I was about to leave, a man began swimming in front of us…

In the days that followed, I started early every day to document people commuting to work in the deteriorating environment.

To protect myself as I spent about 8 to 10 hours on the streets everyday, I kept an N95 mask on most of the time, but every now and then when the air irritated my throat, I would cough uncontrollably.

By Friday, the landscape in the city had changed dramatically. The beautiful glass facades of tall skyscrapers that would normally gleam in the light during the day were replaced by a landscape of dark, ominous silhouettes that stood in the distance, covered by a smog that had turned slightly orange. Outdoor areas that were usually bustling with activities were now mostly deserted just like a ghost town.

I walked around Marina Bay the day when the air quality was the worst (at 400 PSI) and captured a few memorable sights including the never-say-die tourists, posing with the Merlion statue and making the most out of their holiday, with nothing else to be seen in the background. I was sure they would have stories to tell about Singapore when they got back home.

Two cleaners perched on the facade of the iconic ArtScience museum, like ants climbing on a jar of honey.

And then there was this jogger whom I chased down to get a photo. I was on a call when he glided past me. I quickly put down the phone and took a quick shot of his back view. Not willing to give up, I ran after him. After a good 150 yards of chasing with all my gear, I quickly overtook about 30 yards ahead of him to get in to position to take a quick test shot. As he ran past, I squeezed off 4 or 5 frames before sitting on the ground. I should have asked him for his name, but I was really too tired to chase again. With the mask that I wear, it was too difficult to breathe, and that 200 yard dash really made me see stars. Later, I went to a 7-11 store to buy a drink, and the cashier thought that I was going to pass out when she saw my fogged up spectacles and dazzled look.

Now, winds of change have blown the haze northwards. I felt a great sense of relief, the cough was gone and I had more appreciation of the cleaner air that I can breathe. But I wonder: When will the haze be back again?